Comments on news posted 2013-01-25 11:12:18: AT&T released their fourth quarter 2012 earnings this week, showing that the communications giant logged $32.2 billion in revenue for the quarter. The lion's share of that was of course wireless service, with AT&T saying they sold 8. ..

Re: really?

Because this was supposed to be their holy grail quarter, you know the one where they had just released a new phone (instead of the 4s "refresh") with LTE and a big screen and it was going to show that Apple was going to gain against android, that it could compete, at least in this quarter, substantially.Over the course of the quarter it became apparent that they were selling a lot of iPhones, just not selling a lot to new users. Even ATT had around 80-85% of iphones sold were to existing iPhone customers. This is essentially a loss for ATT because Apple subsidies are staggeringly high, almost double in many cases. It's a good deal for Apple that many of their users are loyal, but without significant marketshare growth there is concern.

So Apple managed to move 47 ish million iphones, meanwhile Google activated around 150 million android devices in the same quarter. This was Apples quarter, their new, large screen phone, LTE, not a refresh, and the wind fell out of the sails.

At this point the analysts start to wonder if the shiny paint that most tech sites have been talking about disappearing for a year or more is starting to fall off of the iPhone and it's long term growth prospects is probably not nearly as good as some had previously believed.

Couple that with the absolutely dismal sale of Mac computers, and the eroding tablet marketshare to android and that why investors are taking a step back.

Re: Lobbying should be outlawed

We need citation for that my friend since you know the right only listen to Faux news that tells you Unions suck people dry and yet offer no proof of this. Yet those wonderful right to work states pay the less,work you to death and get no rights and can get fired and re hired 3 moths down the road so you can keep working and get no benefits. I call that Right to work=Modern day slavery

Like it or not, you are worth only what it costs to replace you. There is a labor market just like every other market. When wages are artificially held above equilibrium, you have unemployment and inflated prices for goods and services. When they are well above equilibrium as they are now, you have very high unemployment; currently it is 8% despite there being millions fewer people in the workforce. Unemployment would be 11% if those people were still in the available workforce. When labor costs are sky high above equilibrium as is the case in certain sectors of the labor market the supply of those jobs evaporates. We saw that with textiles in the 1980's and manufacturing in the 1990's. Now there is no industrial base to support the economy so the public sector unions have run out of everyone else's money along with the shell games to hide the massive debt and pension burdens. Virtually every state has more government workers than those in manufacturing and there are now trillions in unfunded pension liabilities. The result is having to cut services right and left to pay for them. There is no one left to pull the cart while governments have accumulated an unimaginable level of union pension debt. Future generations have been fiscally raped to satisfy today's public union greed.

We have only to look at the Postal Service to see the unsustainability of this. A few years ago the USPS was compelled to start banking money to pay these future liabilities. They make the promise to the workers, they have to start setting aside the money to pay it. They don't have the money to even begin saving to pay these future liabilities. They are making promises they could never pay. Who seriously thinks that in 20 years, with all the advancements in digital communications that the USPS will have the massive profits needed to pay these obligations? No one. It would mean a taxpayer bailout just like GM, which still owes the taxpayers billions and billions of dollars and that is after stealing from the SECURED mom and pop bond holders and giving a chunk of the company to the unions. It is like making a promise to your kid that you will pay for their college education but instead of saving for it, you are just going to pay the tuition bills out of pocket when you get them. We all know the money won't be there and the kid is screwed out of his promise. Stop making promises ya can't afford and stop expecting promises for stuff that you know are not possible.

The economics of labor is just a fact of life, and it is a fact parents for the last 20 years have refused to tell their spoiled booger eating children. They have been telling their idiot kids that they are "special". Now those narcissistic, think anyone gives a crap about their blogs, tweets and FB, children end up getting a degree in Women's Studies with a minor in Sanskrit and then are shocked when they can't get a job, any job. After being told their whole lives that they're special they find that they aren't. In fact they're well below par, beyond worthless to all potential employers. Then they end up at Walmart and Starbucks pissed that they're not getting $50,000 for their 28 hour a week job and demand unionization. Meanwhile we need to issue truckloads of H1B Visas to get engineers here. The problem isn't that there aren't good paying jobs. The problem is that too many people are lazy spoiled brats.

The bottom line is no one owes you a living. The days of getting $90,000 with a high school diploma are long over. If you want more money and job security, get saleable skills instead of being a parasite. When you are a parasite the host dies, or it takes a chemical bath before leaving for Viet Nam and Malaysia.

The unions are dying because their economic model of artificially high labor cost is unsustainable. Not every job will pay a middle class wage, period. Now you can call it Faux propaganda, but this is how the world is and you can grit your teeth with the other 3 people who watch MSNBC and you can do it while filling out applications for McDonald's and Dominos. But wouldn't it be better to get saleable skills and forge your own future? Oh I know, that would require some hard work and initiative and today people want everything without having to work for it, the entitlement mentality that is turning a nation of makers into one of takers. It is time EVERYONE gets out of the cart and starts pulling.

That's all I'm going to say on this. Thankfully people are wising up and public sector pension reforms are being passed across the nation while private sector union ranks are on the decline. At the same time corporate welfare needs to end; enough with the subsidies for green energy and Wall St. bailouts. Enough with "capital gains" and time to regard all forms of "income" the same and tax it the same. Enough with the perks and special favors for ANYONE. Enough for one person or business getting a "break" while others are left to make up the difference with the balance borrowed on the credit of future generations. It is time that takers of all stripes: private, public, union, corporate; all of them stop holding their hands out and are forced to be makers again. The time has come to throw EVERYONE out of the cart and reconsider the criteria for getting back in.

No Choice

It's a shame that I live in a 194 unit apartment complex in Upstate SC where I have no choice. The idiots at Charter decided we are to far away from the main road which is BS to bring service in. So we are stuck with AT&T and Directv. The DSL and phone have worked fine although limited to 6 meg down and lousy 512k up. We keep hearing U-Verse is coming, but not quite sure that's any better. To be honest I was hijacked into the phone service to get a good rate on the DSL, that pisses me off. Like I said no choice here.

Re: at&t nothing but a shady bad all around corporation

Because we are talking about pesky regulated services. Yep. No one wants those.

Now if the regulators would just do their job and force ATT to maintain that infrastructure they were already paid billions of dollars to maintain.....

If the regulators would realize that IP service today is the bona fide equivalent of the PSTN of 50 years ago, and ATT was indeed paid to maintain that, they should be just forced to provide every one of their wireline customers with at least a 6 MBPS data line at regulated rates.

Yeah, I said it. Those services should *all* be regulated.

I am there. I have the $14.95 ATT DSL right now, and they are still advertising $14.95 DSL on their website. It can barely manage a 2 MB download, and they raised the rates to see if I would complain 7 months after they put it in. It's been a year now and they have just jacked up the rates again. To what they say is the "regular" price. I say the regular price is the one you put on your website. There ought to be a law!

These are all big bad companies and they are all using the same playbook. Advertise cheap prices then raise them later, claiming those are the "regular" prices. But only chumps pay those inflated prices.

Re: Lobbying should be outlawed

Are you a former Union employee? That's a lot of hatred for something that raises wages and benefits for working class families. Should we all have Chinese labor laws and pay? It's not unions that are bankrupting goverments. It's the fact that houses have lost 1/2 their values so property taxes have plummeted. I would be more than happy to vote for higher taxes. I did not ask for my taxes to continue to keep dropping.

is ratter how should i say. Pessimistic when he only points to the post office. So what about those nice right to work state. How well are they down? I say ratter bad even for the non union since we all know those right to work states are the ones that have the worse pay. I bet skeechan is salivating at the thought of being a chinese company owner LOL where he could work his employees to death and nobody will say a peep. Oh hey I think scheechan forgot those nice gift to the gov are tax deductible.

Post office being bankrupted not good enough for ya? How about Illinois? It has been bankrupted by the same greedy public sector unions and their political allies.

said by The New York Times - Illinois credit rating the worst in the nation :Nearly two-thirds of the Illinois state governments $58 billion in direct debt consists of bonds the government issued to cover retirement payments for workers, including a $10 billion pension obligation bond that broke all previous records in 2003.

Yet despite all that borrowing, Illinois public pension system is still in tatters. In fact, its total pension shortfall is conservatively estimated at $85 billion. Recent changes that raised the retirement age for new workers and limited the pensions that future workers can earn have not reduced the existing obligations.

And the result

said by The New York Times :And for the people who live there, this has resulted in decrepit commuter trains and buses, thousands of unsound bridges, 200 hazardous dams and one of the most inequitable public school systems in America.

And this story is repeated from California to New York...public sector unions bankrupting states resulting in ever increasing taxes and lower levels of service. The pension system should be outlawed and all public sector workers compelled to use the Social Security system like the rest of us are compelled by law to use. If I can't get out of the self employment tax (paying both halves of social security tax, over 15%) why should they?

Meanwhile in right to work states, things are booming with balanced budgets, lower taxes and lower unemployment. Some RTWS are looking to abolish their income taxes all together...a nice fat raise to every worker. Walmart is paying $17 a hour to start in North Dakota.

This is what would happen across the country if we had an administration that wasn't anti-domestic energy or better didn't have low information voters looking for free stuff accounting for the plurality of the population. The boom in North Dakota is happening on private lands where the government hasn't been able to stop them. Imagine the boom if we didn't stop blocking leases on Federal lands. In energy states, we see high paying jobs. Unleash those states and in non-energy states, dirt cheap energy would be fueling a manufacturing resurgence, offsetting the higher cost of import transportation and foreign labor; making it cheaper to build stuff here. Increase the demand for workers, wages go up, unemployment goes down, government revenues go up, expenditures and debt go down. Unions...don't need them.

Apparently all that you need is a government that isn't beyond inept standing on the throat of the economy and even the lazy and stupid could get high pay. Not only would unemployment drop and wages increase but all that money would stay here instead of being exported to terrorist states. But nope, we are supposed to walk to work with a windmill on our heads thanks to $5 a gallon gas. The ripple effect of high energy cost coupled with union demands for artificially high wages sends jobs packing.

Labor is supply and demand and you are worth only what it costs to replace you. The only way you will increase our standard of living is to increase the demand for workers. The bottom line is unions kill jobs and support a job killing administration.

I deny it absolutely, lower taxes, lower unemployment, governments that aren't bankrupt and in states like North Dakota, way higher paid.

North Dakota vs Illinois...I think which is better off is pretty clear.

But you can deny it all you want as California, New York and other states sink farther into the abyss of higher taxes, higher unemployment and record debt thanks to greedy unions bankrupting the state or running businesses out of town. Frankly I could care less if New York is bankrupt or Illinois is bankrupt. It just means that more business and capital will be moving to states where they can better compete in world markets. If taxes and regulations continue to increase in California, I'll be one of them. My family comes first; Sacramento and greedy public unions can go F themselves.

One of my biggest customers, Alcoa has a plant in Waco with lots of happy non-Union employees. That plant is one of the few that hasn't seen their operations moved to the Acuna Mexico facility. They get good pay and benefits, plenty of overtime and because the cost of living is lower and there is no state income tax they do way better than their remaining counterparts in Alcoa plants in California (Fullerton, Torrence and Carson). Meanwhile Alcoa is actively shuttering union plants because they can't compete in the world market with them. If I leave Cali I'm going straight to east Texas where poachers are already offering great tax breaks to subsidize the move, interest free loans for construction of a 100K sqft tilt up, along with training subsidies since I would be creating 50 good paying machinist jobs. But I would have no trouble finding skilled machinists there unlike Cali where everyone is on drugs (4 of my last 5 applicants failed the drug screen) and were obvious victims of our horrible publik edukashun sistim that graduates people who are functionally illiterate (again thanks to a greedy teacher's union that blocks all meaningful reforms).

Meanwhile not too long ago I got a $250 bill from the City of Huntington Beach for a parking lot inspection fee. WTF!?! For my cobalt slurry drum, I have 3 inspectors, City, County and State, all charging well into the hundreds for 5 minute inspections. And only in California is highly recyclable cobalt considered hazardous. Last month I got a Fire Department self inspection form where I check off that I am safe and send it back with $125. Lest not forget the how dare I have a burglar alarm fee (which is in addition to any false alarm penalties). Fee fee fee tax tax tax.

And even with all of these fees, 9% sales tax, 9-13% income tax, 2% property tax...tax tax tax (car registration runs into the hundreds per year, 36 cents per gallon gas tax in addition to the Fed 18 cents), the city, state and county are beyond broke because of the greedy public employee unions. Many of my customers and competitors have already left but since I have family here I've stayed. But the state is doing its best to get me to fire my employees and leave. I'm not an ATM from which to feed greedy public employee unions. There comes a point that I will shrug and with a big F-U leave and take my sizable economic activity with me.

Wait wait. you mean those lovely Red states that are doing worse the California? I mean cone on dude it was proven that those states you mention that are in trouble are doing way better then those states you like. Unions once they are gone say hello to your free to work slave wages. Unless you are one of those so call "job creators" LOL

Whatever, union membership is in decline, blue states are bankrupt and business has had enough with taxes and regulation.

You are only worth what it costs to replace you and there is nothing more portable than rich people and money.

Atlas has shrugged. Hope you enjoy the new normal of fewer services and higher unemployment, debt and taxes. The rich will always be rich while the middle class will evaporate, all because of blue state incompetance and union greed.

Party like it is 1933! We're sliding back into recession which will do wonders for the middle class.

All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.

-- President Franklin Roosevelt in an August 16, 1937 letter to the National Federation of Federal Employees.

Buddy look I didn't say they weren't people on wellfare but I find it funny that you take California a huge state as your example yet that same state pays more then what it gets from the feds. yet those lovely so called "bastion of anti liberalism" red states take more then what they give and yet they use more wellfare. Check OK and the rest.»www.slate.com/blogs/the_reckonin ··· xes.html

Again, 9 of the top 10 states per capita for welfare are blue, lead by California with over 3%. But I'm all for your plan for ending the redistribution model. We'll start a flat tax so that everyone pays their fair share and we stop having the top 10% pay for over 70% of everything while the bottom 50% pay less than 3% and finish with the ending the pork going to the farm states. If the 10% percent earn 46% of all the income, they should pay 46% of the tax burden instead of 70+. Perfect. Meanwhile Al Gore doesn't need farm subsidy money...end it all. Why are we paying people to turn corn into ethanol while a box of corn puffs is $5? No need to steal money from California to give to Iowa...I'm with ya. If ethanol is so bitchen (which it isn't), the market will support it on its own. Same with green energy...end all subsidies. If wind and solar can't compete with natural gas and coal, so be it. No more taxpayer money to the Solyndras and A123's of the world. Oil companies...record profits...they don't need my my money either. We'll end the 18 cent Spanish American War tax on gasoline to offset any price increase.

We agree...end all redistribution of wealth whether it be from rich to poor or blue to red. Perhaps the freeloaders will be willing to take that job at Dominos instead of sitting at home watching Maury as they sponge off the productive members of society. Turn off their their free stuff spigot.

Meanwhile the liberal utopia imported from Europe is working...we're back in recession, to be confirmed and the end of the quarter when the effects of the massive tax hikes are realized. And it will get even better when people find out that Obamacare isn't free. The IRS just released their ruling report and a family of 4 will have to shell out $20,000 a year (the bronze plan) to avoid paying the IRS penalty and this is in addition to the trillions the CBO says Obamacare will cost the taxpayers (so that family gets to pay twice...yay) while still leaving tens of millions uninsured. It also doesn't consider the state's costs of all those people going on Medicare. While for the first few years, states are fully funded and only if they let everyone living at 133% of poverty level into state programs, Federal support starts tapering off after just a few years leaving already bankrupt states to pick up the difference. Where is that money to come from? Schools? Police? Even higher taxes? Yay that family gets to pay a 3rd time. This blue state gov't knows best mentality is doing wonders for the middle class. In 10 years there won't be a middle class.

Hope you are enjoying the new normal. The rich will always be rich while the Administration continues its unrelenting war on the middle class.

Wait wait so now the problem is poor people? I mean we can't lump everybody that is on welfare. Not everybody is on welfare because they want to. Only right wingers would do this. Hence why they keep losing election. Hey at least in Europe their recession is not that bad because so many countries add their problem into one pool and also their earnings so is good for then. Also those blue states still give more then what they take so again you can't say they are not doing their part. Also Obamacare(which is Romney care) wether is free or not still pay for your own damn medical bills isn't what you right winger say we need people to be accountable for themselves. So now lets move on from that since again your party lost because people want accountability . Now lets talk about the now. Why are we still fighting about something your great Leader Ronald Reagan was in love and fought for? He was Pro Union till the day he died.

Oh yeah, Europe's recession isn't that bad. That's rich. Even Germany is headed back to recession and the UK is headed toward an unprecedented TRIPLE DIP recession. And Germany is the engine of the EU, carrying everyone else.

And yeah, the lazy are a huge part of the problem. We are no longer a nation of makers but 50+1% of takers voting themselves free stuff. It used to be the poor would take any job they could get whether it was delivering pizzas or whatever but now the poor is increasingly populated with the lazy. Now these leeches make more money on welfare so they have no incentive to be productive. And it is made worse as they just vote themselves more goodies every chance they get. Meanwhile the productive are sick of being raped to fund an ever engorged unproductive lot. They leave...they leave for red states or in the case of business they leave for other countries. Record numbers are now on disability...suddenly jobs are insanely more dangerous than they were 4 years ago? No, the lazy are taking over, draining government resources while contributing nothing.

Even better news today, 157K jobs created (doesn't even keep up with population growth) while 169K left the workforce. The net loss of jobs continues, what 2-3 years after the "summer of recovery"?

8.5M fewer people working today than 4 years ago and the number grows by the month. Welcome to the new normal, brought to you by the blue state mentality of government knows best.

Umm the nurmbers were out and the EU are doing ok hence why our stock market was doing well today. Again that dumb quote from the GOP cost then the election and it will do the same year after year if they stop alienating voters by putting then in a negative light. Look Romeny/Ryan lost more voters then McCain Palin and those last two were really dumb. Why are we losing jobs simple since those nice job creators are sending then over seas to pay less for workers and earn double and then claim they love america. But in reality what they love is the American dollar not its people. Hey if the blue state mentality is not working then why are those 10 states are always blue and never red? want to know why? because those blue states know that Red states never learn their lesson that the rich and right wing is never going to help the poor.

And what financial crisis would that be? Debt, massive massive debt from decades of liberalism promising everything without a plan to pay for any of it...unions...pensions...debt. So all of these nations like Greece sold bonds after bonds, borrowing after borrowing to fund their liberal utopia. Well, now the bonds are due, these countries are all over leveraged and no one will loan them any more money. To get people to loan them more money interest rates skyrocket leading to even more debt. It is a death spiral, the same one we are in as we pass a debt level 100% of GDP, a level not seen since World War II. There will come a day when people look at our debt, now approaching $20 trillion and will say no more to US Treasuries. Then what? We raise the interest we pay to get people to buy.

Then we are spending a trillion a year just SERVICING our debt, not paying a penny of it down...a trillion in just interest payments. Where does that money come from? Higher taxes on the middle class? Across the board cuts in social problems? This administration is raping future generations of any hope for a better life. He is stealing from them just to get reelected, to keep his power. It is sickening.

Stock market doing okay? Great, so Obama's plutocrat 1%ers are doing well while small business and the middle class are destroyed. Middle class folks all left the market and didn't come back. So much for looking out for the little guy. So while the boy king works on his golf game, shuts down the jobs council (mission accomplished I guess), more and more people leave the workforce, the economy stalls back into recession. Now gas is $4 a gallon and it is still the dead of Winter. What will prices look like in August and how will that affect middle class pocketbooks? As if the Administration cares about the middle class...he gets free gas and a private jet...F us common folks.

This administration from day one has engaged a war against the middle class and small business while giving away the store to greedy unions and an even greedier Wall St. And we see what it gets us...the lowest worker participation rate in decades, record debt, record tax increases (on everyone except the plutocrats) and now a double dip recession.

The Summer of Recovery!

Of course by this time during the Reagan recovery we were doing 300K jobs a month, unemployment had come down from double digits to just over 7% and by the end of the 2nd term his policies led to a manufacturing boom and the creation of 20 million jobs. I know, my business was built during that time, a time when Southern California was the aerospace capital of the nation...not any more, Sacramento has run everyone out of the state.

So far with Obama he struggles to keep unemployment below 8% (the rate he said we would peak at if we didn't pass the $800B stimulus) and it is 8% even with well over 8 million people leaving the workforce. There aren't enough jobs being created to keep up with population growth. And if those people who dropped out of the workforce were still looking for work instead of having given up, unemployment would be 11%.

I already explained why blue states stay blue, the takers outnumber the makers.

umm very interesting yet those liberal countries are doing way better then us if people listen to folks like you bud. I mean look if those countries were doing so but so horribly won't they be moving away...which they are not. The Obama plutocrats now thats a new one wait weren't they czars and dumb@ss I thought the middle class we forgotten by GOP hence why they voted blue. Also small business are not doing as bad as they were a few years before Obama won the first time. The reason why the work force is not going to grow is outsourcing,people that won't work in the field they know also the takers? what takers if you notice those so call takers pay taxes so you are basically taking what you put in. Since you know Medicaid,Wellfare and other social programs you pay for with your taxes. Wether those taxes are the ones you collect at the end of the year or from any selling and services that charge you a tax.

They are moving away...how do you think Merkel and Cameron came to power? They're finally passing austerity measuring to restore fiscal sanity but they have a LONG road to financial stability.

Obama is pedal to the metal on the failure that brought the EU to its knees. Know a lot of small business owners do you because I'm telling you that isn't true. Before Pelosi and Reid came to power in Congress, business was good. As soon as they rolled it and deficits went from $161B to $400B in a year, that is what everything started to unravel.

The takers don't pay tax...the bottom 50% of income earners pay less than 3% of income tax revenues. You have to have a job to pay FICA taxes and if you are an employer like me, you pay 2X the rate that employees do, 15.3% and that is on top of 10% state income tax and 39% Federal income tax, plus all the Obamacare surcharges and taxes. My effective rate is well over 50%...the government makes more off my work than I make off my work. How about we take over 1/2 of your stuff and see how long you stay blue.

Wait wait so now Obama is a failure so let me guess ex president Bush then was a champion on fiscal matters? Oh so you think you only pay taxes at the end of the year? if that was the case then the US government would be totally broke the rest of the year. You pay taxes on everything you purchase or services you use. Just look at your bill. Also let me guess you prefer to receive more money from work so you can instead give it back your doctor and not get any of the coverage. You have to give some to get some nothing is free. Middle class has not disappear totally so no need to sound the down. Liberalism hasn't fail uncontrolled greed aka capitalism is the one that has fail.